Indian Prime Minister Singh in China

Sun Jan 13, 2008 1:26 AM EST

world-news, china, india, manmohan-singh

BEIJING — Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived in Beijing on Sunday for a three-day visit aimed at boosting sometimes strained relations between the two Asian giants, whose massive populations and sizzling economies are increasingly driving world trade.

Singh was scheduled to meet with top Chinese leaders including President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and the Communist Party's No. 2 ranking official, Wu Bangguo, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

His visit, the first by an Indian prime minister in nearly five years, comes as the two nations enjoy a surge in trade to $37 billion in 2007, almost touching the 2010 target of $40 billion set during Hu's 2006 visit to New Delhi.

Singh, who took office in 2004, has also presided over an unprecedented increase in contacts between the two countries, which fought a short but bloody war in 1962 but held their first-ever joint war games at the end of last year.

Mistrust remains over the decades-old clashes and the still unresolved border dispute over which they were fought. The two, whose combined population of nearly 2.4 billion accounts for a third of humanity, have also been seen at times as rivals for economic and political supremacy in Asia.

China has long-standing close ties with India's rival Pakistan and some have interpreted Beijing's cultivation of Myanmar and other Indian neighbors as presaging a low intensity competition for influence.

Prior to his departure, Singh said he would discuss "issues relating to the boundary," expected to include both the border dispute and India's concerns that Chinese troops have been making incursions over the de facto frontier.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu sounded an upbeat note on the dispute last week, saying negotiations on the issue had garnered progress and that China was "willing to work together with India so as to reach a fair and reasonable resolution framework acceptable to both."

However, prospects for a resolution of the dispute during Singh's visit appear unlikely, with 11 rounds of talks so far yielding little real progress.

Beijing has also expressed concern about New Delhi's increasingly close relationship with Washington, including a recently signed civilian nuclear deal.